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Re: [dxatlas] Faros: I'm Impressed, so I bought it! But I have a question.

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AA0OI

Hi Dave: I m sure Alex will also answer you,, but sound like computer and Win2K are just to slow.. Im running XP at 3.2 gig ( overclocked to 4.0 gig) and

Message 1 of 4
, Jan 11, 2008

Hi Dave:
I'm sure Alex will also answer you,, but sound like computer and Win2K are just to slow.. Im'
running XP at 3.2 gig ( overclocked to 4.0 gig) and saving gif's only takes seconds ( about 3 or 4)..

Firstly, I'm not easily impressed by things, but Faros has realy got
my attention, so much so I've paid to register it. Well done Alex,
an excelent piece of work...

A question though, in relation to Faros V1.2

Could you in the next maintenance release (if you do such things)
provide the means to specify the history change timing, to values
other than multiples of 3 mnutes...? (Any value >= 3 perhaps?)

This is because I've noticed that when Faros saves it's history
as .gif's, it fails to monitor whatever beacon it's got "active" in
the beacon/band list at that time.

I guess formatting the files and writing to disk takes just too much
processor time or something. Anyway, as it is at the moment, it's
always the same beacon/band combination that get's hit. It'd be nice
to let the gaps move arround a bit ;-)

Oh yes, this is running on a Win2k PC, with a P3/666MHz cpu, and
Creative PCI souncard. A Dell Optiplex GX110, with 390Meg of RAM.
If you think it'll help, I'll stuff more RAM in the thing. (It's
the fastet "spare" PC I have with a suitable sound system!) The
intention is to dedicate this PC to Faros, so it's not going to do
much if anything else.

At the moment, other than the above, it's all working very well, with
my TS-870, but I still intend to interface OmniRig to the old Icom IC-
R70, and active antenna, as that always hears the beacons better than
the 870 when it's not using the ATU.

When that is all settled, I'll arrange for the history images to be
available via a website like several others, for the greater good of
hamdom.

73, and Thank you again Alex, for a truly excelent piece of
programming. I salute you.

Hi Dave, Thank you for bringing my attention to this problem. You are correct, generation of a gif file takes much time because data compression is involved,

Message 2 of 4
, Jan 11, 2008

Hi Dave,

Thank you for bringing my attention to this problem. You are correct,
generation of a gif file takes much time because data compression is
involved, and this screws up audio streaming. I can change the time interval
in the next version, but I will first see if can solve the problem by
running the gif stuff in a separate thread.

73 Alex VE3NEA

----- Original Message -----
Could you in the next maintenance release (if you do such things)
provide the means to specify the history change timing, to values
other than multiples of 3 mnutes...? (Any value >= 3 perhaps?)

This is because I've noticed that when Faros saves it's history
as .gif's, it fails to monitor whatever beacon it's got "active" in
the beacon/band list at that time.
[skipped]

g8kbv

Hi Alex. Thanks for the reply. When you are ready, let me know and I ll test it for you, as I have perhaps a less than otpimum CPU at present. I sort of

Message 3 of 4
, Jan 12, 2008

Hi Alex.

Thanks for the reply. When you are ready, let me know and I'll test
it for you, as I have perhaps "a less than otpimum" CPU at present.

I sort of wondered if the .gif saving was being done in the same
thread, as I can do other things with the same PC, & even the
antivirus updates OK without disturbing Faros's audio DSP routines,
so a dedicated thread for that could be the answer.

With this P3/666 PC, The CPU usage seems to be about 10% average,
with regular bursts to 28%, I'm only doing the periodic history
backups every 2 hours at the moment.

Another idea (actualy I forgot to mention it last time...)

There is already an option to monitor one band only, how about the
ability to monitor one beacon only?

I realise that you'd need a radio capable of switching bands quickly,
and not all rig's can do that, but it'd be useful to monitor one path
for an individual user at least. It's what I was trying to do over
the years with the HP3585a analyzer and my own code experiments,
before the analyzer died.

Perhaps (in the future) even the ability to substitute one of the
existing beacons for a "custom" frequency, so perhaps "something
else" could periodicaly be monitored? Just ideas...

I've now got my copy of Faros registerd just fine, after two attempts
with RegSoft, seems they cant process credit cards where the bank is
not in he USA, but they can do PayPal, at $3 extra though. I'm still
very happy with the program, but I'll be checking the credit card
statement when I get it, just in case...

I'm still more and more amazed at what comes out of the noise, here
on the edge of a RF noisy urban environment at IO92ma, with a non
resonant antenna, very close to the house, with all it's noisy
gadgets.

Just goes to show what posibly can be done with HF even at this point
in the sun's cycle with a very modest antenna. A "Random Wire
Sloper", from the edge of the house roof, to a dead tree stump only
some 10m away, fed against ground at the far end via a "Long" length
of coax and remote ATU (bypassed for Faros's use at the moment)

Best 73 Alex.

Dave G0WBX.

PS: In relation to Faros. Do you (or anyone else on the list) know
of any free or shareware GPS synchrosnisable Time Server software
that Faros could communicate with if for example you were out
working "/portable" with no 'net connection?

>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Thank you for bringing my attention to this problem. You are
> correct, generation of a gif file takes much time because data
> compression is involved, and this screws up audio streaming.
> I can change the time interval in the next version, but I will
> first see if can solve the problem by running the gif stuff in a
> separate thread.
>
> 73 Alex VE3NEA

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